Developing new application fields for industrial robots - four examples for academia-industry collaboration

During the last decade(s), few new application fields for industrial robotics have developed although exploiting the state-of-the-art in (industrial) robotics research may unlock a plethora of new applications in industrial manufacturing and other areas. Ongoing structural changes affecting the population of Japan and various European countries, esp. population ageing and accompanying health issues, increase the need for assistive robotics systems in human-centered production environments and require the automation of potentially complex, but unergonomic tasks. Due to various issues - addressed in the paper - current robot control architectures and programming paradigms do not meet these needs. Fortunately, technology leaders in industrial robotics are currently striving to innovate and address these needs. Academia-industry collaboration can successfully accelerate these innovation processes and may thus have significant impact on commercial products and solutions. After reviewing the above mentioned needs and identifying crucial issues in current robot control architectures and programming paradigms, we present four case-studies which contributed to solving some of these issues together with industrial partners. Several factors contributing to the success and failure of academia industry partnerships related to our own project experience are discussed.